Blonde in Bagdad
by mysocalledwriting
Summary: Prequel to Homeland season 1, covering everything from the days previous to 9/11 to Carrie's adventures in Bagdad. "Do you think I'm crazy, Hassan?" I sobbed. He took my face in his hands, so I was staring into the night-like immensity of his black eyes. "You're not crazy." he said."You're the terrible combination of brilliant and lonely."
1. Prologue

_Prologue_

Carrie´s POV

The world turned gray.

Every person in New York City saw that day in a different colour: For some, it was black. Black as smoke. Black as all the funerals that came after. For others, the vast majority, it was red. Red as the flames. Red as blood.

For me, it was gray. The ashes. The dust. The dead bodies on the street. Even the screams turned gray. I´d seen, and I have seen since that day, dozens of explosions, of people dying and children crying, of buildings falling down. But the world has never turned as gray as it did that day. I doubt it will ever be that shade again.

That's the problem with tragedies: They hit us right where we least expect them. No one expected the great, magnificent Titanic to sink. No one expected the Twin Towers to fall. I never expected my unconditional friend to die in them.

That wasn`t the day I started working for the CIA, but that was the day I decided that it would be my personal mission to be the foreseer. To never let anyone be hit like that day again. I made a silent vow, that the next time, I would see it coming.

Next time, I would stop it.

At any cost.

I didn´t know then how much it would actually cost me. But something tells me that, even if I had known, I would have vowed all the same.

So I guess this is the story of the Gray Day, and everything that happened after. Then it will be up to you to decide if I've kept my vow or not.


	2. Chapter 1

_Sepetmeber 7th, 2001._

 _Washington D.C_

 **Chapter 1**

I was awakened by the sound of my phone ringing. I carefully untangled myself from the sleeping figure next to me and took a quick look at the time. 6:30 am.

"Damn it, Carrie." I hissed at myself. For the third time in a week, I had broken my golden one-night-stand rule: Never, ever sleep over. And never, ever cuddle.

I looked at the caller ID and picked up, hoping I wouldn't sound as hung over as I felt.

"What's going on, Saul?"

"Damn, how many drinks did you have last night?" he asked.

"It's 6 am on a Saturday morning, Saul. I'm asumming the whole purpose of this call wasn´t to inquire about my drinking."

"Right, right."

He sounded tired. He must have been up all night. "I can't tell you now. We're on an open line. We need you at Langley as soon as possible"

My heart skipped a beat.

"Is it about…?"

I didn't have to finish the sentence. He knew me well enough to figure out the words within my silences.

"Just get your ass down here. Sue's already on her way."

I brushed the hair out of my face and started looking around the room for my clothes.

"I'm on it."

"And get some coffee on the way, please."

The phone call ended as I began to get dressed. Could this be it? It had to be…right? What else would justify summoning me to an emergency meeting in the middle of the night?

I thought about Sue, and if she had though the same thing when she got the call. I could almost see the dark sparkle of her coffe-bean-coloured eyes, the sparkle that was there the whole time as we conducted our research. A glint of anticipation.

With my high heels on my hand, I tiptoed to the door, which was a relief to find unlocked. It made sense that it was, but with a guy who cuddles… you never know.

I thanked God I kept an extra work outfit in the trunk of my car and climbed into the back seat to change out of the dress that smelled like club and cigarettes. Flashbacks of the previous night rushed in to my mind. There was jazz. There was always jazz. And scotch. And flirting. And its evident consequences.

The blue pill felt hard against my dry throat when I swallowed it. My magic little blue pills. It's scary how much you can depend on something that small.

I parked in my usual spot at Langley and sat behind the wheel for a few seconds, soaking in the quiet. I knew that as soon as I walked in to the conference room, all the quiet would be gone. But I liked that about it. I liked the rush, the fast-paced discussions, the feeling that I was always needed somewhere. And I liked the unexpected.

I did then.

I took a deep breath and tried to gather my thoughts before going in. Maybe it was what I though it was. But maybe it wasn't. And if it wasn't, I couldn't let it drag me down…not like last time.

Sue was waiting for me in the lobby. "

"Hey you." she said in a thick Latin accent.

"Hey."

I smiled through my nervousness, as if it would fool her. There was no one in the world who knew me better than Sue, not even Saul. Not in the way she did, at least. And not in the way I knew her. We'd met in college when I was a smart but wild 19-year-old, still fantasizing about getting a music degree and coming to terms with an unsettling psychiatric diagnosis, and she was still Susana Lopez, a scholarship student from Colombia majoring in Political Sciences, with a smile and poise that made every rich kid in Harvard feel like she was way out of their league. She was still that girl to me, even though she had a steady 4-year-relationship with our colleague Emily and everyone had gotten used to calling her by the Americanized version of her name.

I chewed on my lip nervously and stood next to her as we waited for the elevator.

"Do you think this is about the terrorist safe house we might have found in Bagdad?" She asked bluntly, no hints of anxiety in her voice.

"I hope it is. I mean, we have found a significant amount of evidence."

"Yeah, but Carrie, we presented that file weeks ago. Why would they be deciding this just now?"

I bit a little harder. I hadn't thought about that. I guess anyone else would have feel annoyed when someone finds the logic in something faster than you do, but that was one of the reasons why we had become best friends: when I met her, I knew I'd finally found my match.

"Maybe they found the last piece. The tiny connection our thousands of dots were missing." I said.

We got in to the elevator and Sue stood in front of mirrored walls to comb her shiny black hair with her fingers. "Well, whatever this is, it'd better be important."

"My, my, who are we trying to make jealous today?" She wiggled her eyebrows at my fake engagement ring, although she knew its purposes perfectly well.

I snorted at her and took the ring of my finger.

"I just forgot to take it off after last night"

"Sure you did."

As I'd expected, the room was full of people running around, making phone calls or staring at the screens. David Estes was pacing around with his usual unhappy look. I avoided eye contact, as I'd been doing the past few weeks, and prayed he wouldn't be the one to explain the situation.

To my relief, it was not him but Saul who hurried towards us as soon as he saw us.

"There you are! We need you to look into these people."

He handed us each a long list of names.

"All the information you can get. Friends, family, place of origin, address, recent trips, anything you can get your hands on."

I looked at the names. I recognized some of the names from the keep-an-eye-on wall of our office, but they had little or nothing to do with our safe house research. Sue and I shared a look of disappointment.

"May I ask what this is about?" she asked.

"An asset in Kabul has sent an encrypted message that helped us discover the possibility of an attack in Washington. Just the name of the city and a name: Mohammed Afzar. Estes has a group on him now, but we only have a few hours to find our asset before he gets discovered. These are our friends who might help us get to him."

He nodded at the list.

"Asset's name?" I asked, my mind already going on full speed.

"Farid Ahmmed. I recruited him if Afghanistan a few months ago. We believe he's reliable."

I raised my eyebrows.

"You believe?"

"Not the time to question. Get working."

And on that friendly note, he turned around and it was Galvez's turn to get bossed around. My throat felt even drier than before and I wondered if I had really gone too heavy on the drinking.

Sue dramatically sat down in front of our shared desk and winked at me over the mess.

"Looks like we're in for a fun day."


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

 **A/N: Hey guys! Please notice that I've changed the date in my last chapter, I'd made a mistake..oops! Sorry for the trouble, please be gentle/take pity on me…just to clarify, the story starts on September 7** **th** **, 2001.**

 **Thanks for reading! Enjoy!**

"I don't like this, Sue…"

I muttered just loud enough for her to hear me. We'd been stalking people for hours, and the unsettling gut feeling was getting worse with every passing hour. I was beginning to believe it had nothing to do with last night's scotch.

"Honey, when have you ever liked anything?" Sue chuckled at me without looking away from her computer screen.

I rolled my eyes at her and avoided the question. I did like some things. A few. Sometimes.

I ran my fingers through my blonde hair and tried to gather my thoughts.

"It just seems too easy. This mystery guy, from whom we have never received relevant information before and who doesn't seem to be related to anyone interesting, suddenly sends a message giving the name of a city and the name of the leader of the attack. It's too straight forward. Real stuff usually isn`t."

Sue frowned. "Yeah, but it's Saul's contact we're talking about. Don't you trust him?"

"You know I do, but…"

"…but not as much as you trust your own gut" She finished.

I rolled my eyes at her again, maybe because it was true.

"Well don't get cocky too soon, blondie." She continued. "I might have just found a way to track down "

I shot up from my chair and almost jumped over her, trying to see what she was doing.

"What? How?"

"Well, while you were busy chatting with your gut, I figured we could try to hack every one of these lovely people´s phones and send a ghost message to all of their contacts…"

"…so we could monitor the receivers and find the one contact they all have in common." I heard myself getting enthusiastic. "And then it would just be a matter of tracking down that number."

"Pretty much."

"Smart, Lopez."

"I though so." She smiled her wide, uniquely-Sue-like smile.

"You've already done all of that?"

"Hell, no. I came up with the master plan, but got stuck in step 2 of the hacking. We need a computer genius for this, and I'm afraid you and I are just average geniuses. I'm telling you so you can go ask Galvez for help."

"Why do I have to do that?"

This discussion came up every time we had to turn to Galvez's freakishly extensive computer knowledge. We were both too proud to ask for any sort of help, and the self-complaisance he showed when we did ask didn't make it any easier.

"Because I did last time, and I can`t go around sacrificing my ego every time an ego needs to get sacrificed. I represent Latinos."

"What do Latinos have to do with this?"

"You should know by now: Latinos have something to do with everything. And I can't make us look like ignorants in the CIA!"

"Yeah, alright." I said in a sarcastic tone, although I was already heading to find Galvez.

"You wouldn´t understand it, blondie. You don't have to carry around the responsibility of representing your nation in a foreign land."

"Is that responsibility easier or heavier to carry around than your great Latina boobs?" I smirked, and I could hear laughing out loud as I walked down the hall to Galvez's office.

As my good luck would have it, I ran in to David Estes.

"Carrie." He called.

He looked so different from what he'd looked earlier in the Operations Room, confidently giving orders and taking charge. He was staring at the floor and switching his weight from foot to foot like a nervous schoolboy. I would have laughed, if I hadn't known I looked exactly the same.

"David, hi…have you seen Galvez? We need him over here."

"He was working with me in my office, but we're done now so he'll come down any second." Having recovered some of his composure, he looked up at me.

"Great." I faked a smile. "I'll let you get on with your job, then."

I cursed myself for letting myself fall in one of those akward situations I had so far managed to avoid at work. I tried to sneak away, but he grabbed me by the arm. For a second I just stared at his hand. I hate men who grab you like that. As if I needed a reminder that they are stronger.

"Carrie." He muttered. "About the other night…."

"I get it." I interrupted. "You were drunk. You never meant for it to happen"

"Well, if you want to put it that way…"

I delicately freed myself from his grasp.

"I won't tell anyone, if that's what you are worried about."

"Well, yes."

"It's fine, David. You have a wife. And kids. Our thing was nothing but a stupid mistake. It won't happen again."

He opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but didn't. He curved one side of his mouth, in which I assume was his version of a grateful smile, which for some reason, I hated.

"Glad we`re on the same page."

Then he turned his back and went the opposite way, as if he had closed a business deal. I stood there, wondering if he really deserved what I'd just done for him: Saving him the trouble of saying the ugly truth and laying it all out for him while he stood there like an idiot.

I was startled by Galvez sneaking up on me.

"How's it going, Carrie?"

I pushed Estes out of my mind and focused on sounding like myself again.

"Great, actually. I was looking for you."

"Oh, were you?"

"Yes."

I did my best to ignore his I'm-so-pleased-with-myself look.

"Sue has an idea on how to find Farid Ahmmed."

I quickly explained the plan to him. His arrogant gesture was gradually replaced by one of pure interest and concentration.

"Yes! I know just how to do that!" He nodded enthusiastically.

"No shit." I whispered to through gritted teeth.

As we hurried down the corridor I could almost hear his mind working at full speed. I did my best to hide that I kinda liked him sometimes, despite his attitude. He always so eager to do stuff. We had that in common.

He burst in to our office and sat in front of Sue's monitor without saying hello.

"Good. You've found him."

Sue grimaced at me.

"I heard there was a damsel in distress."

He was already furiously typing his way in to the cell phones' systems.

"There is. She just stole my computer." Sue said.

"Ha,ha."

"Just be a doll and talk us through it, will you?" I jumped in.

Sue and I stood at each side of him, leaning towards the screen. His explanations were going as fast as his fingers, so they were almost impossible to follow, but I don't think he was doing it on purpose this time. But we had no problem catching up with him, since, as Sue had pointed out before we were also our own kind of geniuses.

(***)

"So we just have to type in this long number, and it will take us to him?" I asked.

We were almost done.

"That`s the plan." Galvez turned to Sue and stepped back from the keyboard. "Want to do the honors?"

"Well, it was MY plan after all."

She gave him a little grin and took care of the last step with no hesitation.

We turned our heads to the world map in the attached screen, which narrowed down to the Northern Hemisphere, and then…

I frowned at the computer.

"That doesn't make sense."

"He's here? In Washington?"

Sue and I shared a confused look. Galvez stared blankly at the blue dot strolling along Georgia Avenue.

"We might have typed in the wrong number." He muttered.

"That's not possible." I said. "We've been through a million times."

"Carrie, do you think…" Sue hesitated. "Do you think he might be coming here?"

"He was in Kabul less than 24 hours ago." I turned to Galvez. "Can you get us inside the city's security cams? We need visual confirmation."

5 seconds later the vision of a busy street opened up in the screen. Hiding behind a black hoodie, I recognized Farid Ahmmed's sharp features.

Just then, the image flickered, along with the dot in the map.

"Okay, somebody get Saul, and get him fast!"

I desperately tried to save the connection. "We're losing him!"

Galvez bolted out of the room. The echo of his footsteps was drowned by Sue's Spanish swearing.

" _Mierda, mierda, mierda!"_

The dot and the images kept disappearing every 2 seconds. I barely had time to save one of them before they were gone for good. "Fuck!"

Galvez came back with a panting Saul.

"Can someone please explain to me what's going on?"

"He's here, Saul." I said breathlessly. "We tracked your source down to Washington and we think he might be on his way to Langley."

"Okay."

He didn't ask how we'd done it, or who had been un charge.

"Are you 100% sure it was him?"

"Positive. We've got visual confirmation" I pointed at the image I'd saved.

"Ok. Well, the most probable thing is that he's afraid of getting caught and he's coming here for safety. We'll send a team to find him. He'll be questioned and hopefully that will give us a clearer view of the picture."

"Okay." I drew in a deep breath. "Where do you want us?"

Saul raised his eyebrows at me.

"I want all of you home, getting a good night's sleep. You've done enough for today."

"But Saul, Sue and I are interrogators in training. We should be in the room with him." I complained.

"I'll be there, and I'll make sure you both get to be present during the debrief tomorrow."

"But-"

I tried to keep complaining but Sue wouldn't let me.

"Come on, blondie. Let's get out of here. I'll buy you a drink."

She handed me my briefcase and pushed me towards the door. Saul patted my shoulder.

"Good job, kiddos. You've done well."

I smiled. Sue and I were a good team. We understood each other. In the CIA, the two of us were still kids, launching in to a world that was both exciting and utterly terrifying. A world that scared us almost as much as it attracted us. It was in moments like that that you could see it: The urge to dive head first in to that world, battling against your every instinct ordering you to run away from it as fast as you could.


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

 _ **A/N: Hey guys! Can't believe you are still reading! If you're enjoying, reviews and follows are apprecaited :)**_

I stared at my untouched jar of beer. Sue was sitting beside me at the bar, looking more at home there than she did anywhere else. The Hispanic bartender was serving mojito after mojito, while singing along to the Latin music that sounded in the whole club. Dancing couples moved sensually to some hot tango. I had spent many nights swirling around that dance floor myself, back when Sue was still on the hunt for sexy, preferably Latin american one-night-stands, and I was still her faithful wingman. She didn't need a wingman anymore, but it would always be our go-to bar when she needed a rant or I needed something different from the all the jazz.

"Okay, you're not drinking your booze. Should I get worried?" Sue asked in a playful tone, but I could tell she was only half- joking.

I shrugged. "I'd rather keep my mind clear. In case they change their minds about the interrogation."

Sue gave me an exasperated look. "Blondie, you have a higher alcohol tolerance than anyone I've ever known. And I'm from Colombia."

I rolled my eyes and gulped down half of my glass. "There. Happy now?"

She smiled.

"Very. Plus, you will need some alcohol in your system for what I'm about to ask you."

I raised my eyebrows. "What is that?"

"What happened between you and Estes?"

I shouldn't have been surprised. She knew. I hadn't told her, but I didn't need to. Sue always knew. It was one of the reasons why she was good at the job: She saw right through people. She'd been seeing right through me for years.

"We slept together." I only dared to look at her big brown eyes after I'd said it.

"I know that. The sexual tension between you is so obvious even Saul could see it." She said. "But I mean, how? When? WHY?"

I threw my hair back and prepared to tell her. "Remember the deal with Soraya Jan?"

"The terrorist's sixteen-year-old daughter. You were in Beirut with Saul when he recruited her. She volunteered as an informant, but then she got scared and no one could make her talk, until you asked if they could give you a try. She told you were her father was and thanks to that he got captured." She nodded. "I remember."

"She contacted me again a few weeks ago, telling me she'd gotten hold of her father's computer and a bunch of documents. As soon as I reported it they said they would send an analyst to Beirut to follow up the situation and keep an eye on Soraya…"

"…and you though they would send you." Sue finished the sentence for me.

I bit my lip so that it wouldn't quiver.

"But they didn't." she said.

"But they didn't." I nodded.

"Did they at least tell you why?"

"The words `insubordinate´ and `unexperienced´ come to mind, yeah."

Sue frowned.

"But what does Estes have to do with any of this?"

I took a deep breath. "We both stayed late that day. He walked me out, asked me if I wanted a drink. So we had some beers and we talked and all of sudden he says, that he was there when they picked the analyst, and that he didn't agree with it. That he was rooting for me. So we went back to my place. And I guess I don't need to tell you the rest…"

For a few seconds, Sue stared at me silently. Then she asked:

"Did you sleep with him because you were upset? Or because you think it would make him root harder next time?"

"What? No! Of course not!" I snapped. Although it wouldn't be the first time Sue saw something in me I hadn't seen yet.

I looked away so my eyes wouldn't keep betraying me.

"I don't know."" I whispered vaguely. "I was upset. I wanted to be there. I should have been there. It was my accomplishment, but I screwed up by being my shitty, unexperienced and insubordinate self."

"But you do lack experience, Carrie." Sue said in a sweet voice. "So do I. We've just started working at the agency, but we kick asses. And yeah, you might be a bit of a rebel sometimes, but that's because you're too smart for your own good and you are big fan of shit getting done your own way. That's okay. Stop being so hard on yourself."

I stared at my chipped red nail polish (when was the last time I'd had time for a proper manicure?)

I couldn't tell Sue. I didn't know how to explain that now that I had finally found my place in the world, I would do anything for it to need me as much as I needed it. I would do anything to fit in to the CIA as well as the CIA fit in to me, in to everything I was.

"So, David Estes…" she said. "Was he at least good?"

"Well, for someone with such a big ego, he was disappointingly small."

Sue's laugh made every male (and female) presence near us turn their heads.

"Gosh, you must have been upset."

"I know, I know. He's a jerk. But he wasn't acting like one that night…he was actually kinda sweet."

I remembered the way he tucked my hair behind my ear and said I was the brightest woman he had ever met. But deep inside, I knew I liked the words more than the person who had spoken them.

"Even if he is not a complete jerk, he is still married." Sue pointed out. "Whatever shit you are going through, he can't be the solution."

"Probably not." I agreed.

"Oh, no. I'll take none of your 'probablies'."

She gave me her best death stare, which was pretty good.

"Promise me you won't get involved with him. You'll just get yourself hurt."

I rolled my eyes, even though I knew she was right.

"I promise, Mama."

"Good." She nodded solemnly. "I want to kick your butt, but what I want more than anything, is for you to stop kicking your own."

"You mean I should step away from my area of expertise?" I joked.

She waved her hand as if taking importance off the matter.

"You'll keep your distance and in a few weeks none of you will remember what happened."

It amazed me how she had managed to keep her optimism intact while hunting terrorists for a living.

"It can´t be that easy. Nothing is that easy." I said.

"You're wrong. Our job isn't easy, I'll give you that. Afghan terrorists aren't easy, I'll give you that too. So, since you're already surrounded by all that messy stuff, my advice is to stay away from the one mess you can avoid."

She took the final sip of her beer.

"And that means, no fucking married men."

"With you there." I raised my glass.

Two seconds later, my cell phone beeped. It was text message from Saul.

"They want us back at Langley." I told Sue. "Says here it's urgent, but nothing more."

"Fuck Saul and his pathological need to create suspense."

Being used to flee on demand, we were out of the bar in less than 5 seconds. I swear I could hear the bartender sighing when Sue walked out.

"He must be there. Farid Ahmmed. Something must have happened." I said to her as we ran across the parking lot.

"Maybe he's there to deliver the rest of the message."

"What rest of the message? Sue, there is no rest to that message. He's already told us all he could possibly know. Besides, why would he risk sending it if he was coming here anyway?"

Suddenly I wasn't so excited about Ahmmed's arrival at Langley. The guy was a double agent, after all. I remember Saul saying that double agents are like acrobats walking on a tight rope: they're trying to balance their weight, but you never know for which side gravity is going to make them fall.

"Talk about messy stuff, huh?"

I laughed nervously, trying to relieve some of the pressure that was bottling up inside my chest.

"Yeah."

Sue sat behind the wheel and I jumped in to the passenger seat.

"But I meant what I said before…not everything is supposed to be so complicated, Carrie. I know that all your life you have been shown otherwise…but life it's not supposed to be so hard."

(***)

This time was different: when we burst in the Operations Room, everyone was standing completely still. It took me a second to figure out what they were all looking at.

A video was being played in the largest monitor. It looked like it'd been filmed with a bad camera. In the right corner you could see the date, September 8th, 2001, and the time, 8:32 pm. Less than two hours ago.

The room where the scene took place was small and barely lit. In front of the camera was a man whose face was covered by a dirty trash bag. His hands were tied behind his back. He was collapsed against the chair where he was sitting. If you listened closely, you could hear slight moans of pain.

Then 3 Middle-Eastern men walked in to the room. They were all wearing white, with the exception of the black _shemaghs_ covering their heads. I gasped when I recognized one of them:

Abu Nazir.

He stood behind the prisoner and brutally took off the bag, to revealed the bruised face of Farid Ahmmed. Abu Nazir looked coldly at the camera and spoke in a hissing voice that sent chills down my spine. Three simple words:

"Consider yourselves warned."

Then, before any of us had time to process what he'd said, he lifted one hand he'd been hiding behind his back. The large knife came down heavily, and Farid Ahmmed's head rolled down the floor.


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

 **A/N: I LOVE you for reading this, and I will love you even more if you vote and/or comment 3 After this I won't be able to update for 8 days or so, so please don't forget about me** **L** **Hope you enjoy this new chapter!**

 _September 9th, 2001_

 _Washington D.C_

I stared at the only wall of my living room that didn't have jazz posters or photography hanging from it. In this wall, Sue and I had laid out everything we'd been studying for the past 2 months: Maps, photographs, newspapers articles in more than 25 languages, classified documents. A huge map of Irak stood out; in the outsides of Bagdad, we had drawn a big red cross. The location of our safe house. After we had just witnessed, it could be months before anyone payed attention to it again.

The memory of the decapitation made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

6 hours had passed since we all got told to go home, sit tight and wait for instructions. I'd drifted in to a brief, uneasy sleep, haunted by the one question I couldn't stop asking myself:

"Where am I going now?"

I lay in bed for a long time, fingering the corner of my sheets, unable to be still. Fidgeting, fast-thinking, sharpened senses… the warning signs previous to manic episodes.

"They're not." I told myself. "It can't happen. Not now."

I got up and took a long shower, as if water could wash the monsters away before they got out of control.

Bare feet and with dripping hair I walked around my apartment, until I ended up in front of my ignored investigation. I hadn't even bothered to turn on the lights. As spies, we learned to feel comfortable in the dark. Even to like it.

(***)

The sun found me in the same position. I don't know how long I would've stayed there if the doorbell hadn't rang.

Saul was waiting for me at the door. He was wearing the same suit he had when I left him at Langley the night before, and I wondered when was the last time he'd been home.

"Hey. What's going-" I started to ask, but he pushed past me and started talking before I could finish.

"Get a suitcase ready. I'm sending you and Sue to New York- your plane leaves tonight."

"WHAT?" I asked, as I followed him in to my own house. "What do you mean you're sending us to New York?"

"Exactly that." He stood in my living room with his hands on his hips. "We need analysts in New York following transactions. Washington is a target right now, so I'm sending you two. End of discussion."

"No fucking way."

My pulse was speeding and I felt myself getting worked up. What the hell was wrong with me?

"Abu Nazir and his men are here. In Washington. Planning an _attack._ If you think I'm leaving them to it, you're out of your fucking mind."

"That's exactly why I need you in New York."

I hated the way he always kept his cool when we argued, while I sweared and yelled like a mad woman.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean? They killed our informant right under our noses! They threatened us! What does New York have to do with any of that?"

He sat down on my couch and started looking for something in his briefcase.

"Sure, go ahead, make yourself at home." I snickered, obviously angry at his patronizing decisions and lack of explanations.

When he found what he was looking for, he gave me an irritating smiling.

"Your little trick with the cell phones might have just led us to the person funding the attack." He said.

"What?" Reluctantly, I took the document he was handing me.

"There was a second number that received the ghost message from all the contacts. Check out name."

"Ommar Ahmmed." I read out loud. "Who is this person?"

The next thing Saul handed me was a photograph- the face of a man that looked a lot like the deceased Farid.

"He had a brother?"

Saul nodded. "The brother we didn't bother turning to our side, because until tonight, we had no idea he was working for the other."

He laid out his profile all over my coffee table.

"Moved to America on 1976. Yale graduate, Economics degree, lives in New York, works for the International Bank of America. He has a wife and three kids and a big, nice office at the World Trade Center."

"Just the kind of guy no one would suspect of."

I sat down next to him. My anger had gone away just as fast as it had overwhelmed me. After all this was over, I needed to sit down with Maggie and have a serious talk about readjusting my meds.

"What makes you think he's behind this?" I asked.

"He made 6 trips to Kabul in the last year. On June of this year he was the head of a business deal with the Afghan National Bank…"

"Let me guess: Thousands of dollars mysteriously gone astray."

Saul nodded.

"Well, you've obviously done your homework." I sighed. "So our job is, what? Ambush him and make him confess everything?"

"You said it yourself, you're interrogators in training. I though you would jump at the chance of tackling this task."

I crossed my arms across my chest and laid back on the couch.

"I don't know, Saul."

"Look, I've already got a team working on finding and stopping Nazir before it's too late. If it's the threat you're worried about, we've got security all over the CIA. We've got it covered. There's nothing else you can do here. I need you in New York, to let this guy know we're on to him before he flees, or worse, starts working on their next move."

I shook my head at him.

"It just doesn't make sense. They brought him all the way to Washington just to kill him? How did they even get inside the country?"

"Well, if they're on the verge of blowing the city up, where else would they be? The slaughtering was a show off, Carrie." He actually chuckled. "After all this time, they still think they can scare us out of an investigation."

"It's not their style." I kept muttering.

After a few seconds of silence, he reached out for my hand. I let him take it, but I didn't squeeze back. For the first time since he'd burst in, he looked directly in to my eyes.

"Please, Carrie. I can only keep a few people safe under these circumstances. I'd rather it be the two of you."

Maybe it was the wet-puppy look he gave me, that for some reason reminded me of the way my nieces looked when they asked me to stay just a little bit longer, or the fact that it really was an interesting interrogation to take on, or that I knew that if I stayed in Washington I would have little to no participation in the operation. Whatever the reason, I agreed.

"Okay. Fine. I'll do it."

Saul smiled and patted my hand.

"But only because I want to do it. I am taking nobody's orders." I said.

"Of course you're not."

He got up and started picking up his things.

"You'll have to convince Sue, you know that, right?" I asked.

"I'm pretty confident. She's not the difficult one, missy."

I couldn't help but smile as I walked him to the door. She would have said the same thing.

"Well, good luck." He told me. "Make sure you know everything you need to know about him before the interrogation. Don't get in trouble. And try to get some sleep- for real, this time."

"You too."

I closed the door behind him. I was still holding Ommar Ahmmed's picture in my hand. I wondered how someone who looked that human could be doing something so heartless.

The thing about this job, is that it comes a point where you can no longer think of terrorists as this scary-looking Middle Eastern men, with long beards and dirty clothes, who meet in a dark bunker in a country forgotten by God and plan the destruction of the Western civilization. You realize there are other kind of terrorists: the kind that wears five thousand dollars suits and has master degrees and lives in New York City and has a well-paid job and an office with a nice view and pictures of his kids in it, a nice house and a wife and maybe a dog. And that, that is the kind that really scared the shit out of me.

I was heading up stairs for a short nap when I got a text message from Sue.

 _Saul called me. Gr8 plan in the makin. We'll pretend to be investment advisors._

 _Scheduled meeting at the WTC, 9 am, day after 2morrow._

 _xoxo_

(***)

Our plane landed in New York City in the early hours of September 10th, 2001. I stared out the window of the taxi cab that was taking us from the airport to our hotel. Sue had fallen asleep next to me, exhausted from a whole flight we'd spent memorizing our characters. The interrogation would take place the following day in the North Tower.

I wondered if I should be tired, too. Instead, I felt completely wired. My mind was buzzing with the details of my alter ego, the words I would say, each of them rehearsed and calculated, and the lyrics of the song Sue had insisted we listened to over and over again during our flight:

 _Mientras siga viendo tu cara en la cara de la luna, mientras siga escuchando tu voz…_

In an instant, the view of the New York City skyline blew all those thoughts away. The Empire State, glimmering in the early morning sun. The Chrysler Building, the New York Times'… yes, I was the sort of person who knew what buildings were called.

My gaze lingered at the Twin Towers, rising higher than everything else. Much like Sue and I: standing side by side, tall and stout.

Indestructible.

Or so I though.


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

 _September 11_ _th_ _, 2001._

 _New York City._

When I woke up in the hotel room I was overwhelmed by a sudden, inexplicable pang of terror. For a minute, I forgot where I was and what I was supposed to do. A thousand unfamiliar voices shouted commands inside my head, most of them telling me to run. I pressed my hands to my ears. My heart was pounding against my ribs.

Sue's alarm clock went off in the room next to mine. It helped put reality back in to place. My pulsed steadied as I took in my surroundings. I sat up on my bed and rubbed my arms, concentrating on my breathing. The voices were becoming almost inaudible. I spoke out loud to myself to make them go away for good:

"It's okay. You're okay. There's no need to run. You are at the Waldorf Astoria in NYC. Your task for today is to interrogate Ommar Ahmmed about the attack they're planning in Washington."

I went on reorganizing my mind until I felt calm enough to get up from bed. I had to take my pills. I couldn't allow myself to spin out of control. Not today.

I tumbled to the enormous, fancy bathroom. Big blue eyes wide with unmistakable rests of terror looked back at me from the mirror. I tried to shake off the horrible feeling of being overwhelmed by thoughts that didn't feel like my own.

"For fuck's sake, Carrie. Keep it together." I whispered.

I looked for my bottle of medication and stared at the single blue pill I'd let slip on to my palm. Was one enough for today? Maybe I should take an extra…just to be on the safe side…it couldn't hurt…right?

Before I could talk myself out of it, I swallowed two whole capsules. I already felt steadier on my feet- I walked out of the bathroom and picked up my notebook from my night stand. It was open on the page where I'd scribbled the most personal details of both the person I was interrogation and the person I would pretend to be.

For the 20th time, I re read the list under my cover name: Julia Lancester. Age 26. I'd grown up in Los Angeles and graduated from Hamilton High School before going on to UCLA and business school. I'd started working as an investment advisor for the Bank of America as soon as I had my degree.

I went on to focus on the other person, the one that wasn't fictional: Sanaubar Ahmmed. Ommar's wife. I had gone out of our way to find out everything we could about her, from the colour of her gown when she married at the age 22 and her Arabic dance studies to her childhood in Afghanistan and her preference for farsi baby names.

I remembered the first interrogation I'd been a part of, weeks after I'd started working at the CIA. Before it started, Saul had said to me: "Always try to find what makes them human. Not what makes them terrorists."

Nothing makes us more human than love. Therefore, the Achilles heel was always assumed to be the wife. And if not the wife, then the kids.

The kids! It'd been Sue's responsibility to get the information for that part, in case it was necessary, and I still had no idea what she'd found.

Still in my pajamas, I walked out to the hallway and knocked on her door.

"It's open!" She shouted.

I found her in a white, fluffy hotel rob with a towel wrapped around her hair.

"I was just taking my morning beauty shower." She gave the oversized Harvard sweats I wore to bed a disapproving glare. "You could use one too."

I ignored her comment and questions came spilling out of my mouth.

"Have you got all the info we wanted on the kids? All 3 of them? Have you memorized it? Do you think it's enough?"

"Jesus, yes!"

She walked in to her bathroom and started brushing her teeth. I followed her.

"You're sure."

She turned to me and pointed her toothbrush at my face while she spoke.

"Navid is their only boy. He's 4. He speaks farsi and English and all his kindergarten teachers are delighted with him. Azita, the middle child, is 12. She's crazy about the Harry Potter books and she dances ballet. Ommad has never missed a recital. Nazanin is the oldest. She's 14. She wants to be a veterinarian. He father takes her to the Central Park Zoo almost every Sunday."

"Okay. You know it."

I felt dizzy. I had to sit down on the edge of the Jacuzzi bathtub.

"And what about your cover story? Emma Johnson? Do you know that, too?"

"I pity the kids who will have to stand you as their mother during exams. Yes, I know that too."

She suddenly seemed to notice I had sat down and was looking abnormally pale. In a second, she changed from exasperated to worried.

"Jesus, blondie, are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

She sat down next to me and put an arm around my shoulder.

"Have you taken your pills today?"

Sue was the only living soul outside my family who knew about my…condition. I had to tell her after that one night in college. The night I drank my own weight in tequila and then she saved me from trying to jump from our dorm window using a shower curtain as a parachute (she later told me my 1st college boyfriend was there too, but he was not of much use except for pointing out how hot I looked while almost killing myself in a drunken frenesy.)

My manic episodes had significantly calmed down since that day, but Sue had never stopped being ready to face my crazy shit. I never regretted telling her. Not for one second.

"Yes." I said. "I'm pretty sure I have…"

I had, hadn´t I? I didn't remember…maybe I should take just a couple more…just to be sure…

"Okay, that's good."

She rubbed my shoulder.

"Calm down, blondie. How many times do I have to tell you that we kick asses?"

I tried to laugh for her.

"I'm serious. He won't even know what hit him. Watch out, bastard! _Somos Mathison y Lopez, el duo dinámico, el terror de los terroristas."_

I smiled and wondered if she ever used Spanish for anything other than swearing and giving herself dramatic titles.

"It's all going to be fine. Okay?"

"Okay." I agreed.

"Okay. _Ahora fuera de mi baño, peste._ Go take a shower and put on some make up. You see, what distinguish us from the rest of them mortals at the CIA is that not only do we kick asses, but we do it with style."

(…)

A cab was waiting for us outside our hotel at 8.30 am. Sue was waiting inside the lobby, sitting elegantly in her skirted suit, while I stood anxiously beside the cristal doors, tapping one of my high heels against the floor.

"You seriously need to calm down before we get there, blondie." She reached for her briefcase and followed me outside. "By the way you look I would swear you are the one about to get caught in a terrorist funds transaction."

The cab driver gave her a funny look, to which she responded with a radiant smile.

" _Buen dìa._ 285 Fulton Street,please."

"The Trade Center?" He asked.

"That's right."

I fought the urge to look around my purse for another pill. The two I had taken right after leaving Sue's room should be more than enough. Instead I took out my phone and headphones, hoping the soft jazz tunes would make the inside of the car stop spinning.

I was just beginning to relax when the driver turned the radio on. Over my music I could hear the voice of a CNN female reporter:

"American Airlines flight 11, a Boeing 767 carrying 81 passengers and 11 crew members, has just disappeared from the radars of the Logan International Airport in Boston…"

Intrigued, I yanked my headphones off. "Excuse me, could you turn that up for me, please?"

"No!" The driver's hand froze midway on Sue's command.

"No news! They're never good. They'll just stress you out even more."

"Alright, fine." I sulked down like a grumpy teenager, although deep inside I was thanking God for Sue. She knew me well enough to know that before or even during manic episodes I tend to get worked up about the tiniest things and could spend days trying to solve all the injustices I heard or saw in the news.

Sometimes I wondered what I'd done to deserve her.

Apparently I wasn't the only one. Her cell phone rang and I could see it was Emily, calling for the fifth time in less than 24 hours.

"Hey,babe, how's it going?...We're on our way…yes,I'll tell her you wished us luck…I know, Em, I miss you too…"

I detached myself from the conversation, knowing it could go on like that for hours. The fact that it was my best friend and the love of her life talking didn't make sweet talk any less nauseating.

I rested my head against the window. Groups of kids in uniforms walked along the street on their way to school. People hurried in and out of the busy Starbucks coffee shops in almost every corner. A cool breeze anticipated the arrival of autumn. The food carts stationed around the Central Park were beginning to sell the day's first bagels. It was an ordinary day in an ordinary Western city. But I doubt any city looked as beautiful as New York did in that September morning, bursting with life, mixing colors and sounds into its hustle and buzzle, like a perfect song.

It was an ordinary day.

Except that it wasn't.

The cab stopped in front of the North Tower. Sue payed the driver and rushed me out while she tried to finally hung up the phone.

"I gotta go now. It'll all be over by tonight, I'm sure….yeah…I'll see you soon. _Adiós, linda."_

We stood in the middle of the busy street. Was it just me, or was the traffic getting louder and louder?

"After you." Sue gestured to the big glass doors.

I gave myself an encouraging nod and walked through the doors. Sue followed me to the reception desk, where we were greeted by a chirpy secretary.

"Good morning, what can I do for you today?" She asked, with a smile so white and shiny it made my eyes hurt a little bit.

I looked at the big fancy clock hanging from the wall behind her. 8:41 am. At least we were early.

"We're here to see . Miss Johnson and Miss Lancaster, from the Bank of America."

Sue smiled back. She had always been the people-person in our duo.

"Okay, that would be floor 96. Why don't you go ahead, he'll be waiting for you in his office."

"Alright, thank you."

Shit, my eyes were really hurting now. My head was hurting too. A lot.

Sue put a steadying hand on my elbow as we stepped in to the mirrored elevator.

"Are you alright?" Her voice was filled with concern.

"I'm fine," I lied. I would never forgive myself if I distracted her from our task with my silly headaches.

"You don't look fine."

I tried to smile, and the simple gesture caused a thousand needles to bury into my brain. It took every ounce of strength I had not to scream. What was happening to me? How many pills had I taken without realizing?

The pain got worse with every floor we passed. 5. 13. 27. Suddenly the lights that lit up in the bottoms were blinding. 32. I leaned against the wall and shut my eyes, but it didn't make it better. 46. I could already feel my legs buckling. 50. I wouldn't be able to stand it for much longer.

How long had we been inside the elevator? It felt like ages. My breathing pace got faster and faster, and I was overwhelmed with the certainty that I was using up all the air and pretty soon I wouldn't be able to breath.

62\. I was choking. 65. I caught a glimpse of my dilated pupils in one of the mirrors. 71. The elevator started spinning. 84. My vision went blurry. 89. I was sure I was about to puke my guts out. 93, and I couldn't stand it anymore.

I reached out and grabbed the sleeve of Sue's gray suit with a sweaty, trembling hand.

"I…need…to get out." I stammered.

"Fuck." She stopped the elevator and forced me to lean on her.

"I just…need some air." I struggled to keep myself standing.

"There's a balcony on this floor. I'll go with you." she said.

"No!" I reacted immediately. "No, you go. Just wait for me there. I'll be up in just a minute."

I didn't want anyone to see me like that. Not even Sue. Sweating and trembling, leaning for support like a broken doll. It was humiliating. It was one thing that she saw me in my crazy moments, when I was talking nonsense and making insane planes…but no one, no one could see me being so vulnerable. So weak.

And I think she understood.

"Okay. I'll leave you alone. Just don't take too long, okay?"

She helped me walk out of the elevator and rubbed my arms before going back in.

"I won't. I promise." I said weakly.

The elevators door started to close in front of her. She gave me a concerned smile. Only Sue could make her smiles speak. This one said "I believe in you."

I was the last Sue-smile I ever saw.

Encouraged by the fact that the nausea had lessened up a bit, I decided I would find the balcony on my own. I only made it a few steps before I lost my balance, and I was caught by a young man who was walking by.

Dark spots danced around my eyes. I had no option but to let him hold me by the arms.

"Ma'am? Are you alright?" He asked.

I swallowed hard to avoid throwing up all over his Armani suit.

"I'm feeling a bit-"

I couldn't finish. The word "dizzy" got stuck in my throat.

Because in that moment, the world fell apart on top of us.


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

 **Guuuuys I would love some feedback on this! Please...I'm not too proud to beg...**

 **WARNING: This chapter has graphic content, both emotional and physical. Psychological responses and injuries are described in detail. My advice is not to skip it, but in case you decide to, I will add a summary of the chapter at the end of this update. Thank you for reading.**

The blast only knocked me out for a few seconds. I wished I hadn't woken up. Ever.

When I opened my eyes, all I could see was gray.

I heard a thousand of alarms blaring, but I didn't know which were real and which were inside my mind. All the sickness I'd been feeling minutes before had been replaced by new, even more horrible sensations. I could hear moaning and howls of pain. Sounds of destruction, of glass breaking and furniture catching fire attacked me. It really felt like I was being attacked. There was movement near me, but I couldn't see anything. I wondered if I had gone blind. Something warm and liquid was dripping from my forehead. My lips were slightly parted, and I immediately recognized the metallic taste of blood.

Somewhere not so far, a woman cried.

I strained my eyes, and the catastrophe started to come in to focus. The smoke was so thick I could barely recognize the shapes of fallen bodies around me, and the mountain of debris where the doors to the elevator had been. Pieces of the ceiling kept falling over me, but none of them big enough to kill me. For a second, I found myself wishing they were.

I realized I had been holding my breath and I tried to catch some air. The result was a painful, uncontrollable fit of coughing. All I had inhaled was dust.

I was laying in the middle of a corridor, if you could still call it a corridor. The whole floor seemed to have lost its original shape. The world had stopped turning.

As I became aware of my body, I noticed weight over my abdomen- slowly, I moved my arms to try to identify what it was. A squeal of horror escaped my lips when I felt the contour of a human head under my palms. The young man who had held me was laying over me. A steel bar protruded from the back of his neck. If his body hadn't been on the way, it would have gone straight through my stomach.

With great effort I sat up and moved his dead body away from me. My blood-stained blouse was sticking to my skin. I looked down to find every inch of the white silk covered with dark red stains. I left him lying face down, lifeless. I couldn't look at his face.

I crawled on my hand and knees as far as I could from the corpse, and puked my guts out. Exhausted, I fell back against the debris covered floor. I wanted to fall back to asleep and slip in to the darkness, where there was no death and no horror to witness.

But no matter how much I fought it I could feel senses coming back to life, and with them, the need to do everything I'd trained myself to do in those situations. I scanned my body for injuries. Indescribable waves of pain hit my left leg. I pulled up my trouser suit and the injury I found made me scream in an animal way- nothing about this felt human.

A huge wound ran all the way from the back of my knee to my heel. Half my calf muscle had been slaughtered, and I realized I had left a trace of blood behind me. I gagged at the sight of my bone sticking up from my leg, in a weird angle.

The bleeding. I had to do something to stop the bleeding. I looked around for something that would work as a tourniquet. A few feet away from me I saw the motionless figure of a middle aged woman. I dragged myself towards her, using just my arms. She had no visible life-threatening injures, but her wide-open eyes and peaceful expression told a different story.

With trembling hands I unbuttoned her purple satin blouse.

"I'm sorry." I whispered, even though I knew she couldn't hear me. She was wearing a black-lace Victoria's Secret bra. I owned one like that too. For some reason the thought made my eyes fill with tears.

I also took off the pink neckerchief she was wearing. I needed something to help me breath through the smoke.

I tied the blouse with a tight knot just above my knee and held the scarf over my nose and mouth. I dragged myself away from the woman's corpse to what was left of the nearest wall. I knew I had to stand up and look for an emergency exit, if I wanted to get out of there alive.

Apart from my torn apart leg, I recognized my injuries as several broken ribs and an ugly cut in the middle of my forehead. My blonde hair was sticky with dried blood and dirt.

Hobbling and coughing I made my way to what used to be an office, but there was nothing left in there that resembled a desk or a computer. The large windows had been completely blown up. I looked up and realized that the ceiling was barely holding on. The upper floors were destroyed. What the fuck had happened? From experience I could tell it wasn't a bomb.

Something had hit the North Tower, destroying everything on its way.

I heard a slight whimpering and turned my head to where it was coming from. A young girl was cowering in the corner of the room, bouncing back and forth with her arms around her knees. I stepped over broken glass and debris to get to her.

"Hey," I said. I was almost frightened by how hoarse and hard my voice came out,"Did you see what happened?"

If she listened, she made no demonstrations. She just kept bouncing back and forth, hiding her face between her legs.

"Hey!" I repeated, "I'm talking to you! I need to know what happened!"

All she did was cry. At some point I started crying, too. I don't know for how long I stood there, bawling my eyes out, begging a traumatized stranger for answers she wouldn't give me.

I was about to try and walk away when she hiccupped a few words.

"A plane." She sobbed. "I saw a plane. It was coming faster and faster and they it just…oh…a plane…"

She went on repeating "a plane, a plane", without ever looking up. The pain in my leg was getting worse with every passing second. I reminded myself that you tend to faint when the pain becomes too much for your body to bear, and I forced myself to remain conscious.

A plane had crashed in to the World Trade Center.

The following realization hit me harder than the blast itself.

Sue.

She had gotten back in to the elevator.

She had gone up without me.

The plane had hit her.

I remember the woman I had heard crying. I would never forget that sound: animal-like, and at the same time, terrifyingly human. Maybe it was Sue. I knew it was her.

Desperation took control of every fiber of my being. It was stronger than the pain, stronger than common sense, stronger than anything else. It possessed me like an uncontrollable, unknown force. It made me run all the way back to the spot where I had left her, in the doors of the elevator. Every step felt like was someone was shooting me in the leg with burning bullets, but I didn't care. I had to find her. I would find her.

But when I got there, there was no elevator.

There was no Sue.

But no, no, no, that couldn't be possible. It was Sue. It was Susana Lopez, my best friend in the entire world. She couldn't have…no, of course not. She had to be alive. She had to be.

If not, how could I handle being alive, for the rest of my life?

I climbed up the mountain of debris blocking my way to her, and started digging for a way up. I had to look for her. I had to save her. I would save her.

"Sue!" I called, "SUSANA!"

I furiously delved around the rumble, seriously believing that I would find my way to her. That I would find her alive. I came across something that looked a lot like a human limb, but I didn't stop to give it a closer look. I kept digging. I dug until my tourniquet got loose and my broken ribs dug into my abdomen, until my calls turned into nothing but howling, hysterical sorrow.

"SUSANA! I'M COMING FOR YOU! I WON'T LEAVE YOU! I WON'T LEAVE YOU!"

I couldn't think straight. My body collapsed and I rolled down the floor, as my promises turned in to pleas:

"SUSANA! DON'T LEAVE!"

I had no more strength to dig or climb, but my screams were getting louder and louder. I lay in a pool of my own blood. Or was it my tears?

"SUE! PLEASE! PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME!"

They said I was still screaming when the firemen found me.

 **Summary: Carrie wakes up in the aftermath of the first plane. She finds she has a severe injury in one of her legs as well as broken ribs and a gush in her forehead. She tries to find things to give herself first-aid care and comes across several corpses on the way, until she finds another survivor that tells her she had seen a plane. After that, she gets desperate and starts looking for Sue, until her blood loss stops her. Eventually firemen find her and take her out of the building.**


	8. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

 **A/N: This chapter might be kinda confusing at times because it jumps back and forth between reality and Carrie's memories/thoughts etc, but she is in a very confused state of mind so that was the idea. Hope you enjoy!**

Everything was a blur of people shouting, touching me, and carrying me. I bounced between consciousness and unconsciousness. The little I could see and feel was interrupted by patches of black. I could see faces leaning over me, but they were blurry and out of focus. I could feel their hands on me, but I couldn't see what they were doing. All I knew was that it hurt. Everything hurt.

And I could feel was the gray on my skin, filtering through my pores and running in my veins like poison. The gray. The rubble. The screams. The crying girl. The dead lady wearing my bra.

I was inside an ambulance. Paramedics moved around in the reduced space, but I could only hear pieces of their sentences.

"…severe trauma on left leg….prevent amputation…"

"…I need 5 ml of epi…"

"…rigid abdomen…in for a CT..."

For a second it all dissolved in to darkness. Then reality came back, bringing fresh waves of pain.

"The bra…" I whispered.

"What's that, sweetie?" A female voice asked. She put a delicate but firm harm over my wrist and pinched it with a needle.

"The bra…" I repeated. "The Victoria's Secret bra…I have it too…we have the same bra and she is dead…"

"She's in hypovolemic shock," another voice jumped in, "put her on morphine."

I felt a second pinch on my arm, and the darkness made the voices fade away.

(***)

"See you soon," she'd said to Emily.

See you soon.

That day the city was filled with thousands of "see yous" that would never be. Thousands of promises they had no idea they were going to break.

So many people had turned off their alarms, gotten up from bed, taken their shower, as if it was just another Tuesday. So many people had hurriedly eaten their breakfast and rushed down the elevator towards the noisy streets. So many people had stopped a taxi and given the driver the same address Sue and I had, thinking they would be able to take a cab back home at the end of the day. That papers would be handed in and bills would be paid and mail would be delivered, and when it was over, it would be just one more day. One ordinary day in the ordinary lives of ordinary New Yorkers.

All the people who died that day, they were just like me. It could have been me. Why wasn't it me?

None of them got the chance to say goodbye. Nobody did.

Terrorism is so fucked up. So unbelievably fucked up. It doesn't only steal lives. It steals goodbyes. And that, that is one thing you can never make up for. No matter how many terrorists you shoot or how many of their houses you blow up.

In the taxi, I'd been praying my condition wouldn't screw up my interrogation. Same as me, a mother had dropped her son off at his kindergarten, praying he wouldn't start bawling as soon as she left, like he had last time. A teenager had walked to school praying he wouldn't fail that History test again. A man had kissed his wife goodbye, praying she wouldn't be mad at him for too long and that he would be able to get out early to buy her some flowers on his way home.

None of us knew that, hours later, we would find ourselves praying for our souls to be saved.

But none of those prayers were answered.

(***)

When I opened my eyes again, I was no longer in the ambulance. I recognized the sounds and the rush of an ER, but this was like nothing I'd seen before. It was flooding with people. With moaning and screaming and the beeps of the resuscitation machine. The wounded where everywhere, even on the floor, laying in improvised stretchers.

But the paramedics carrying my gurney didn't stop for them. I saw gloves and green scrubs covered in my blood. The lights of the O.R blinded me. A new voice started shouting.

"She needs an oxygen tube, right now."

"Don't you want to put her to sleep first?" I recognized the female speaker from the ambulance.

"There's no time."

I felt a sharp pain in my side, as if someone had stabbed me. A single tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn't scream anymore. The pain made the voices become less and less clear.

"…prepare for opening rib cage…"

"…somebody page Ortho…"

"…5 units of blood…"

I was fading. A part of me wanted to.

"Hang in there, sweetie." The woman from the ambulance said.

They put me on the ventilator right before I passed out.

(***)

The anesthesia takes me back to a 200 hundred-seat auditorium at Harvard University. I'm a freshman again, homesick and still a kid in many ways, but never intimidated. I'm in my Political Sciences 104 class. I wait for most of the students to walk out before standing up and making my way down the steep steps in my black stiletto boots. When I'm about to go out the door, I hear someone calling me from behind.

"Miss Mathison! A word?"

An arrogant grin flashes in my face before turning around. I knew this was coming.

"Yes, Professor Hastings?"

His glasses slide down the bridge of his nose. I smile at the A on the paper he's handing me.

"Congratulations, Miss Mathison. Your essay on the Middle East crisis ranked second in the Harvard Journal's Essay Competition."

I nod politely. The word "second" is echoing in my ears.

"Thank you, professor."

He puts up his hands. "Thank you. It was a pleasure to read. Not to mention, you beat all the seniors who took part in the contest. Well done."

"It's my pleasure, sir."

I frown. If I had ranked second after beating all the seniors, then who the fuck had ranked first?

"Well, go on then. I won't entertain you any longer." He says.

I turn my head one last time before walking out.

"Sir? May I ask who won the first prize?"

"Ah, identifying the competition, I see." He smirks and lifts his glasses as he looks down at the list on his desk. "Funny. You both chose the same subject, with similar approaches, I might add. The winner was one Miss Susana Lopez."

The scene flashes forward to the following night. I walk in to what was known as the hottest college bar. My blonde hair falls over my back and, never afraid to show some cleavage, I'm wearing a transparent tank top over my lace bra. My current boyfriend Neville greets me in the dance floor. I can tell by the way he talks he already has more than a few beers on him.

"Watch out,C!" He shouts at me over the loud techno music. "I think someone is about to break your _I'm going to the bar_ record!"

I follow his pointing finger to a corner table surrounded by a large pack of drunk, cheering students.

"Well, we can't let that happen, can we?" I wink at him and walk over to the table.

I am the designated _I'm going to the bar_ Queen, a drinking game that is like an adult version of _I'm going on a picnic._ Except that each time you mention a drink, you have to take a sip, and if you mess up, you have to take a full shot of any drink you choose.

Sitting in the middle of a circle is this girl. This olive skinned girl, with long brown hair and coffee-colored eyes that seem to shoot dark sparks every time she blinks. I remember her, her rolled Rs and her often mispronounced but witty remarks in the most advanced classes. She is wearing a low cut white dress that ensured none of those guys would take a second look at me. Or at any other girl in the bar, for that matter.

"I hear you're threatening my position as the drinking champion in this town," I say, sitting down in front of her. "You should've known you couldn't get away with it so easily."

She gives me a long look, as if assessing her chances. Then she curls her lip in to an evil, sexy smirk.

"Be my guest." She even makes slurring sound attractive. Despite my best efforts, I'm beginning to understand why they can't take their eyes off her. A girl and two boys join us, and the game begins.

"I'm going to the bar and I need to get a mojito…" I chant.

We go on for a few rounds, adding drinks to the list we have to taste and repeat. A bloody Mary. A scotch on the rocks. A hot toddy. The girl shoots from the table and runs to the bathroom after messing up and having to drink her fourth gin and tonic. The boys follow not long after.

"And then they were two," She sneers.

I sneer back and repeat flawlessly the twentysomething drinks on the correct order, taking a sip of each. She does the same. Damn, she was good.

But not as good at me.

Eventually she starts to mess up. It takes her 5 piña coladas and me, 4 shots of tequila, but she finally surrenders. I stare triumphal at the empty glasses around us.

"It seems like the drunker you get, the better you play." She says in awe, no hints of resentment.

"So I've been told." I give her a cocky simper, but then reach out my hand. "Well played. I'm Carrie, by the way."

She takes my hand and stretches it, amused.

"Susana."

(***)

I woke up in a ICU room. My mind and senses were still clouded by a thick fog. A machine was beeping next to me, monitoring my heart beats. Every part of me felt heavy and numb. A persistent bother had replaced the stabs on my head and legs, probably thanks to the painkillers. But the drugs couldn't do much for the dark hole opening up inside my chest, getting deeper and deeper with every second I spent awake.

My body was hooked up to the bed in every possible way. The oxygen tube was still there, coming out from my left side. I brought my hand to my face and realized I had tubes on my nose, and a thick bandage covering my head, as well as my rib cage. There were needles hooked up to my arms. I propped myself up on my elbows to take a look at my leg. It'd been casted and immobilized by a strange looking artefact.

"Welcome back."

I was startled by the doctor standing beside my bed. He finished looking through my medical chart and set it aside.

"You gave us a quite a scare, Miss Mathison. You got here singing in Spanish. Something about the moon. And you kept calling for a person…"

I shrugged, hoping it would come out as a "I don't give a fuck" kind of shrug.

"You came in with a perforated lung…"

He proceeded to explain everything they had done to save my life. Why,I wondered. Why had they even bothered. Why had I been saved, while Sue….

No. I wouldn't think about it. Not yet.

I had stopped listening to him minutes ago, but his following words caught my attention.

"Blood tests suggest you suffered an overdose right before the trauma. The drug was a potent anti-psychotic medication with considerable side effects. Were you aware of that?"

I looked away. I didn't even know the answer. Even if I did, I didn't want to talk. I didn't want to do anything.

"Okay, then." He continued. "Well, had you not lost 60% of your blood, it wouldn't have been much of a trouble, just some nausea and dizziness, but given the circumstances you will have to talk to your psychiatrist about readjusting your dosages during recovery…"

I blocked out his voice and concentrated on looking out the hospital window. It was raining outside. How appropriate.

"Are you up for receiving a visitor?" The doctor asked, making me snap out my trance.

I shrugged. I wondered when I would be up for anything again.

"I'll tell the nurses he can come in." He decided for me.

Before leaving, he handed me a device with a small white botton, connected to the IV going through my arm.

"If you feel like the pain is more than you can handle, push this button and the morphine will put you to sleep after a few seconds."

I held on tightly to the device and closed my eyes. I heard footsteps walking inside my room. Someone was staring silently at me.

"Carrie." He finally said.

Saul.

Of course.

I opened my eyes, and I regretted it as soon as I did. The look on his face hurt more than anything that had been done to me in the past hours. He was looking at me as he had almost lost the daughter he had never fucking had. As if I were the one person he couldn't bear to see lying almost dead in a hospital bed. And worst of all, as if he would do anything to change places with me. As if he wished it would've been him.

I knew that feeling all too well. I was feeling it right now.

"Hey," he whispered, trying to smile. "You are alive."

Tears flooded my eyes as I nodded. He pulled a chair next to the bed and sat next to me. He took my hand carefully, as if he was afraid I would break if he did anything too rough.

I parted my dry lips and spoke my first word since I'd woken up.

"Sue."

I waited for him to tell me that she was his first visit, that she was in the room next to mine or that she was just coming out of surgery. But he didn't. He just kissed my hand and pressed his forehead against my bed. He stifled a sob, and pretty soon his shoulders were shaking.

I couldn't watch that. I pressed the white button, and waited for the morphine to take me away.

It was real.

She was gone.

(***)

They never found her body.

Everyone says she must have died on the elevator. It caught on fire, which means that within seconds there was nothing left of the body that once belonged to the beautiful Susana Lopez. It is the most probable thing.

But once I heard a witness talking about the people who jumped. He said he saw a slim brunette on the window of the 96th floor. Unlike anyone else, she never looked down. She kept her chin up and her head high. She stood stoically in the window sill with her high heels. She pulled down her skirt. And she jumped.

He couldn't stop talking about it: the way she pulled down her skirt before she stepped towards her death. It was a gesture so simple, so human. So inexplicably heart breaking.

I pray every day that it was her. That on some level, she had a choice. That she had the final decision on how to end it.

That she had time to pull down her skirt before her life was over.


	9. Chapter 8

p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"strongChapter 8/strong/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"strongA/N: Sorry sorry it took so long!/strong/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"strongThank you for reading! LOVE YOU! Don't forget to vote and review 3/strong/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"emSeptember 28supth/sup, 2001./em/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"emNew York City./em/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"New York was in mourning for weeks. People gathered in the streets, to look up at the spot where the towers used to be. Flowers were pilled up and letters were written and tears were shed. America cried while the whole world watched. It was like an eternal fucking funeral, for all the funerals that would never happen, because there was nothing to bury. For all the names that never got crossed off the Missing list./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;" From Germany, from England, from Mexico, from Argentina, presidents sent their condolences. Politicians gave speeches, singers sang sad ballads on TV. The victims families' received comfort and money, the American flag was everywhere. They started repairs on the Pentagon, plans were made for the new One World Center and the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and for some people, that was actually enough./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"But the gray was still alive inside me, long after the wind had taken away the dust, the tears had dried, and the smoke from the world's longest funeral had cleared. The gray made me cynical. The gray made me laugh humorlessly at the plans and the repairs, thinking that they could rebuild and fix buildings, but there was little they could do to fix what had broken inside of the people. The gray made me hate the doctors that kept opening me up and trying to make me well. Somedays, the gray even made me wish that the firemen had never found me./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"In my defense, it wasn't easy to fight the gray while lying in a hospital bed with nothing to do. To this day I still don't know what made start to fight it. What made me accept that someday, somehow I would have to recover. I just did. /p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Maybe the last smile she gave me had something to do. I don't know. But one day, I accepted the food trays I had been refusing since my first surgery. I took the flowers Maggie and my Dad and, who would've said, David Estes were sending me. I started answering when Saul came to visit me and tried to talk to me. I stopped losing weight and became slightly annoyed at how pale I looked. I knew a little bit of that gray would stay with me forever, in the contours of the scars in my leg and my side, but I was learning to live with it./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Needless to say, Sue was one of those people who couldn't get a proper funeral. But that's okay, I guess. She would have hated if the last memory we had of her was that of her loved ones getting together to wear black and cry for her. I know that's not what she would have wanted./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Her family held a small memorial for her in Colombia, which I couldn't attend because I was still too fucked up to get up from bed, let alone get on a plane to Bogotá. I hated Saul and my family and hated my doctors even more for forbidding me to go. I made a promise to myself that as soon as I could, I would fly down to her home town and I would tell her mother and her sisters and her brothers that I had never met anyone quite like her. That she was beautiful, not only in looks, but in the way she moved and laughed and talked, in everything she was. That she was so smart it hurt. That the girl had some balls. That she was loved./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I was writing all of that down in my messy notebook (I had ripped off the page about Julia Lancester and Ommar Ahmmed) when Saul busted in to my room./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Knock, knock, who is it? Well, it's not fucking Saul, because he doesn't knoc," I joked, but I didn't laugh at my own joke like I usually did. A shiver ran down my spine. What if Sue had taken my laugh with her, and now I had to find a whole new one?/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Change out of that depressing gown," he said. "I'm getting you out."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I closed my notebook and almost jumped up from my bed./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""What? For real?"/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"He was already jamming my stuff in to a suitcase. "You will never get better if you keep staring at these 4 walls. If you don't go crazy, then I will."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I bit my lower lip. emGo crazy. /emIf only he knew./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""So they're actually discharging me? How on Earth did you get them to do that?"/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I tumbled towards him, dragging my casted leg./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Just as long as you promise to continue with your follow up treatment with the best orthopedic and cardio-thoracic surgeons in Washington, yeah, they're discharging you."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I rolled my eyes and slapped his hands away from my stuff as I started packing by myself./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I'm sick of surgeons. All kinds of them."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Well, that's too bad, cause you're going to see these doctors, and I'll make sure you don't set a foot in Langley until you are doing all the rehab and physical therapy they tell you."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"My hand froze over the drawings my nieces had sent me. Since the attack, none of us had mentioned Langley or the CIA or what this would mean for us./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""We need you back there, Carrie."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I sighed and took the drawings. "We have a big fucking mess to clean up, haven't we?" I asked./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""We'll talk more on the way home." He said./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"He patted my head before leaving the room. When he was gone, I sat in my bed and closed my eyes. I had to go back to work. Sue's last smile flashed through my mind./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"emHow am I going to do this without you?/em/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"(***)/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I assume there's not much I can tell you that you haven't figured out already."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul leaned back on the plane sit next to mine. We were half an hour away from Washington. I reluctantly took off my headphones, knowing I couldn't avoid that conversation any longer./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I'm sorry, I've been kinda busy trying, you know, not to die."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Come on, you of all people can't tell me that you haven't put the pieces together."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I had. I'd tried and failed not to put anything together, to stop myself from thinking about it, because it would hurt me. And it did./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Fine, you want to know what I figured out? Here's what I figured out: It was all trap. The message from Kabul, the assassination video, Abu Nazir, even Ommar Ahmmed's actions, if he even existed: everything was bullshit. It was all a fucking act, designed to lead us in the wrong direction. Abu Nazir's job was to be the distraction, to make us believe they were planning something solely in Washington, while his good friend Bin Laden got away with exploding the heart of America." I laughed coldly. "And we all bought it. You wanna know what else I figured out? That me, and you, and every single fucking person in that Agency is a good-for-nothing idiot!"/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I'd raised my voice enough to make almost the whole plane give me weird looks, and I didn't give a shit. I wanted to stand and storm angrily towards the ladies´ toilet and lock myself there until I was sure Saul had gotten off the plane, but I couldn't do that with a broken leg and crouches. So I just put on my headphones and turned up the jazz so loud it made my ears hurt./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul didn't say anything. I could tell he was hurt, but I didn't want to care. I wanted to be furious. I wanted the anger to last until I went back to Langley, so I could yell at them and make everyone understand what fools we'd been./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"For the rest of the flight, not a word was spoken. For a second, when I was slowly walking down the stairs of the plane, I forgot, and I looked over my shoulder expecting to see someone else coming with us. But there was no one there./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul stayed with me until I'd found my luggage and insisted on driving me home. When he dropped me off at my house, he even opened the front door for me and took my suitcase inside. I hated him for being so nice./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Thanks." I muttered under my breath./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""No problem."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I couldn't wait for him to be gone, but he rolled down his window and called for me before driving away./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Carrie." He said. "We're having a small ceremony for Sue at Langley today. A sort of memorial. People are expecting you to say something. Show up if you want to."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I raised my eyebrows. "After my little scene in the plane, you still wanna push me to say shit?"/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"He shrugged./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I happen to believe they could all take something from the shit you say."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"(***)/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I passed the security checks at Langley. Nothing had changed there, either. I don't know what I was expecting…I felt so different, and for some reason I believed it would make my home look different, too. But it didn't. I'd walked in to my house to find my living room with the pinboard untouched. The sheets in my bed were the same as the last time I'd slept in it all those weeks ago. My suits and clothes were hanging from my closet in the exact position where I'd left them. Everything was the same. It felt like the world was trying to make fun of me, because I would never be the same again./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I'd decided to come just to escape the mocking same-ness of my apartment. I was beginning to feel disappointed when I entered the space where the ceremony was being held. Chairs had been arranged in rows and some people were talking quietly to each other. Otherwise, the silence sounded respectful. And sad. It would be a long time since silences in America stopped meaning both of those things./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Almost the whole agency was there. I felt a knot in my throat when I noticed the little altar on the stage. The large photograph of Sue, the one they had taken when she was receiving her college diploma. I'd been there, standing just behind the photographer as I waited for my name to be called. But I'd never looked as pretty, as happy as she looked in that moment./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Under the photograph my colleagues had left letters and messages, some of them in Spanish. Candles burned surrounded by flowers. White jasmines. Boys had been giving her roses her whole life, and she would always roll her eyes at me and say she liked white jasmines best. Emily was the first person who ever got the right flowers for her. She was still taking care that she got the right flowers in her death, like she did in her life./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Emily. I caught a glimpse of her red hair in the front rows. I dreaded the moment I would have to talk to her./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I took a deep breath, taking it all in. What they'd put up for Sue had no precedents. It had nothing to do with the formality and impersonality of the CIA. Good. She deserved that much./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul spotted me standing in the back of the room and waved at me to come forward. I moved over there as fast as my cast and crouches would allow me, feeling everyone's eyes on me. Particularly David Estes', who was staring at me from behind the podium. I was careful not to return any looks. I didn't want their pity. I didn't deserve it./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I sat down in the chair Saul had saved for me and concentrated on keeping a straight face./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I'm glad you made it," he said. "I didn't think you would come."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I like not doing what you think I will do."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"He smiled and patted my healthy leg. David Estes tapped the microphone. Evidently they'd been waiting for me./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Since we're all here now, I suppose we can start." He cleared his throat./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I do not need to remind you of the fatal attacks our homeland suffered 17 days ago, on September 11supth/sup. The Islamic extremist group known as Al Qaeda launched a series of suicide missions against the United States of America, including the bombing of the Washington Pentagon and the hijacking of two planes that caused the complete the destruction of the Twin Towers. We had two agents on the field that day. One of them survived with severe injuries. The other one, I regret to inform you, did not survive the attack. That agent was Susana Lopez Duarte. Her death represents a tremendous loss to the intelligence community. It is a wound in the soul of our nation. We have been robbed of one of the brightest young minds that could have lead us to a promising future. We would now like to ask her colleague Carrie Mathison to help us bade farewell to our fallen partner."/p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul had to help me to get to the stage. The mere act of climbing up the two steps was so exhausting I ended up leaning against the podium. Embarrassed, I looked up at my audience. For a second I wished I had never agreed to do it. But then I saw Danny Galvez, wiping a tear from his cheek. I saw Emily, staring at Sue's smiling face. I saw all those people who had probably never talked to her but who had still shown up to pay their respects. I breathed in the smell of white jasmines, and I started./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""For the past 5 years, I've had the pleasure of getting to know Susana Lopez Duarte better than anyone. She wasn't just my colleague, she was my friend. I can't talk about the way she died, or about how I'm going to live the rest of my life without her, because it hurts too much. But I will tell you this: Susana didn't deserve to die the way she did./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I had the blessing of watching her become the person she was in her last moments, and I had a pretty clear view of the person she would have been, if this tragedy hadn't taken her away. She could have transformed our line of work completely. She could have changed the relationships between our countries and the global community for good. She had more courage than all of us gathered here together. And a bigger heart than I'll ever have./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"One of the changes she dreamed about was a better attention to the innocent families of confessed terrorists. She came from Colombia, a country racked by civil wars, guerillas, internal refugees and drug dealing among other conflicts. She used to say she chose this line of work because she knew what is like to be scared of your own family. She dedicated her life to our nation's security, because she knew what it was like to feel unsafe. Yes, she dedicated her life to our cause. And she didn't get to live half of it./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;" She will never get to see all those things she dreamed about. She dreamed about a Counter Terrorism system that tried to comprehend Islam before condemning it. She dreamed about a system built on the desire to prevent conflict, not on the desire to destroy. She dreamed about negotiations, diplomacy and co-operation. She dreamed about understanding. She dreamed about compassion. And these weren't the fantasies of a little girl, these were the views of an educated, brilliant young woman, who was willing to do whatever it'd take to get there. And she would have. But now she is dead. That is the definition of injustice. An injustice we must promise ourselves will never happen again, as long as we can avoid it. Which doesn't change the fact that no one here has the potential to become what Susana Lopez could have become./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"In years to come, we will remember dead agents as brave men and women who died in service of their country. But Susana Lopez was different. She was special. She wasn't an American, but it my opinion, that only makes her braver. She didn't fight for the flag, she fought for the people. She didn't fight for a country, she fought for an idea. She fought because she believed the world could be better than this, it emshould /embe better than this. She fought for the daughters, the sons, the fathers, the mothers who have to pay the highest price for crimes they didn't commit. She believed that no human being, no matter their race, origin or religion, deserved to be a victim of terror. She fought because she believed the war against terror could be won./p  
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Every accomplishment I achieve in my career will be in the name of Susana Lopez Duarte. She lost her life in a battle. We owe it to her, and it is our duty, to win the war."/p 


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